The Democrats' Alternatives

Here appear to be the alternatives:

1. Biden stays in, somehow wins in November, and begins a four year term that would theoretically keep him in office until 2029 at age 86. His choice of a second term VP would therefore be massively crucial since he is likely before then to be dead, gaga, and/or overthrown by the 25th Amendment. Can he afford to drop Kamala for a more promising VP? (Trump appears to be delaying naming his VP choice to keep his options open as long as possible and to avoid drawing attention away from the Democratic Götterdämmerung.)

2. Biden stays in, loses in November as expected, and that’s the End of Democracy or whatever it is we are always being warned about.

3. Biden announces he will serve out the last 6.5 months of this term until January 20, 2025, but will not run for re-election. The new nominee would presumably be picked at the Democratic convention in August, or possibly in an online Zoom convention a couple of weeks earlier to meet Ohio’s ballot deadline. (But Biden has been around ten points behind forever in Ohio, so the Democrats might just blow off Ohio. Or, ideally, the Ohio legislature changes its obnoxiously early deadline date until after the Democratic convention so that Ohio doesn’t stand in the way of America getting to enjoy an old fashioned convention in which anything could happen.)

1. Biden announces he is retiring this summer and VP Harris will become President before the Democratic convention. Voter’s largely respond with approval and sympathy toward Joe’s public-spirited sacrifice.

   4A. Biden, Obama, the Clintons, Schumer, AOC, Bernie, Manchin, etc., all endorse President Harris for the nomination. She is nominated by acclamation at the convention. This solves the Democrat’s unity problem. (This does now, however, solve the Democrats’ Kamala Problem.)
   
   4B. President Harris announces that she will focus over the next six months on fulfilling the heavy burden of the office of President and will therefore not seek the Presidential nomination at the convention. This solves the Democrats’ Kamala Problem by making her seem like, just like her former boss, a self-sacrificing patriotic public servant.
   
   (One weird possibility is if President Harris announces she would, however, accept renomination for the vice presidency. That sounds bizarre by nuclear era American standards, where being President has meant that it seems unthinkably undignified to ever hold lesser office again. But in lots of places and times, this kind of job shuffling happens regularly. It would seem like a humble decision by Kamala and do her approval rating some good. However, if Kamala stays as VP candidate, then fellow Californian Gavin Newsom can’t be on the ticket as well.)

   
   4C. President Harris wants to get the nomination at the convention, but loses to somebody else. This disunity would probably doom the Democrats in November. But, then again, who knows, maybe it would reinvigorate the Democrats if somebody wins the nomination by giving a fiery “Cross of Gold”-style speech like 36-year-old William Jennings Bryan did in 1896 and stampeded the Democratic convention, leading to one of the most fun elections in American history. (The Democrats still lost.)

Another wild card in all this is, of course, Donald Trump, who has been quietly behaving like a serious grown-up for the last week while the Democrats have been self-destructing. Can he keep it up? Can he resist drawing attention to himself? His sentencing is coming up shortly.

Stay tuned for all the exciting details.